I swim 7 days/week 2-3 hours a day. I have heard of adding lifting to my routine to improve my strength, but on days that I lift(possibly 3x a week) do I also swim on those days?
And if I do not add lifting into my workout routine and just continue with swimming 7/wk, do I take a day off? I heard Michael Phelps never took a day off since he was 11 years old and look where he is now... best swimmer in the world.
How do I know if I am doing something wrong?
It is better to think in terms of "recovery" rather than "rest." Recovery is important; it is at this time that you actually get faster.
So swimming 7 days/week might be just fine if you recover between workouts, or one of those days is an "active recovery" day. For me, in many cases, active recovery is better than passive (ie, a complete rest day).
Having said that, even the most hard-core coaches I know will usually only advocate 6 days/week of practice (though sometimes they make their swimmers skip a rest day after a meet).
How much recovery you need depends on the duration and intensity levels of your practices. It may be -- especially at your age -- that you are recovering sufficiently between workouts.
If you don't allow enough recovery, you'll know it because you'll be swimming slower in practice and meets and feel more tired. In more extreme cases of overtraining your times on intervals will fall way off and you might even have trouble finishing practices. You get tired even in warmup. You don't want to get to this stage.
Numbers are good: resting HR, times on test sets, in-season performances at meets, that sort of thing. You need to get a good feel for when your body is suffering from cumulative training fatigue. Do NOT depend solely on subjective perception of fatigue, this can deceive you.
The best advice: talk to your coach.
How do I know if I am doing something wrong?
It is better to think in terms of "recovery" rather than "rest." Recovery is important; it is at this time that you actually get faster.
So swimming 7 days/week might be just fine if you recover between workouts, or one of those days is an "active recovery" day. For me, in many cases, active recovery is better than passive (ie, a complete rest day).
Having said that, even the most hard-core coaches I know will usually only advocate 6 days/week of practice (though sometimes they make their swimmers skip a rest day after a meet).
How much recovery you need depends on the duration and intensity levels of your practices. It may be -- especially at your age -- that you are recovering sufficiently between workouts.
If you don't allow enough recovery, you'll know it because you'll be swimming slower in practice and meets and feel more tired. In more extreme cases of overtraining your times on intervals will fall way off and you might even have trouble finishing practices. You get tired even in warmup. You don't want to get to this stage.
Numbers are good: resting HR, times on test sets, in-season performances at meets, that sort of thing. You need to get a good feel for when your body is suffering from cumulative training fatigue. Do NOT depend solely on subjective perception of fatigue, this can deceive you.
The best advice: talk to your coach.
